Fresh water to day has become a precious commodity worldwide. Saving water, avoiding wastage and better utilization of water are becoming a universal concern. This invention can play an important part in avoiding inadvertent wastage during the usage of water for legitimate personal use, such as washing of hands. It is universally accepted that while washing hands with water, three basic steps are involved. First is the wetting of both hands, second is the application of soap to both hands, and third, washing the soap away from both hands.
One of the basic problems with the commonly used screw-type faucet is that once the faucet is opened to wet the hands, while the soap is being applied fresh water is continuously flowing down the drain without serving any purpose. As the time taken for applying soap constitutes more than 60% of the time in a normal hand washing cycle it can be easily understood that a large quantity of water is going to waste inadvertently. In addition to this screw-type faucet can continuously waste water if they are left open due to carelessness etc.
Spring-type or water pressure based faucet with automatic closing is now being used in many places to avoid wastage of water as they eliminate the possibility of being left open when not in actual use.
Even though it appears that the spring-type or water pressure based faucet with automatic closing can avoid all wastage of water, a detailed analysis of a hand washing cycle using these faucets will make it clear that the total water actually consumed is more than that of the total water consumed while washing both hands using a screw-type faucet. This is explained below in detail:
Steps involved in washing hands using a spring type or water pressure based faucet with automatic closing and assuming a water flow of 50 ml/second,
Step-1 press knob and wet one hand 5 sec 250 ml
Step-2 press knob and wet other hand 5 sec 250 ml
Step-3 Applying soap to both hands 30 sec NIL,
Step-4 press knob and wash one hand 20 sec 1000 ml
Step-5 press knob and wash other hand 20 sec 1000 ml
Step-6 press knob and wash first hand 5 sec 250 ml
Total quantity of water consumed=2750 ml
It can be easily proved that in the above case apart from consuming more water during an actual washing cycle, as both hands are not free to be rubbed against each other for effective washing of hands, the washing of hands is neither satisfying nor 100% effective in achieving clean hands, which can result in indirect health costs to the user.
Other known faucets as described above are metering type faucets and are based on timing the flow/controlling the flow, which have complex mechanism.
Therefore, there is a need to provide a water-saver faucet that provides means to a user to pre-determine the desired quantity of water for use in controlled and simplified manner.